Without a Trace

From our March 2008 issue: Last Labor Day, Steve Fossett—the investment wizard turned record-setting adventurer—took off in a plane from a remote Nevada airfield. He hasn't been seen since. Our reporter retraces the search for Fossett, while examining the theories behind his disappearance—and behind his frequent attempts to defy death

By Bryan Smith

(page 8 of 8)

Aircraft searching for Fossett

So where is Steve Fossett? Cynthia Ryan says theories poured in from all over the world. "I'd get calls from little old ladies and they'd have a dream that Steve had walked out of the forest," she says. Keilholtz says the investigation did uncover several credible sightings of Fossett as late as 11 a.m. on September 3rd, some two hours after he took off. A California highway patrolman saw Fossett's plane flying at a low altitude near Mammoth Lakes in midmorning, and a ranch hand reported seeing the plane disappear around a ridge to the west of Ne-vada's Mount Grant—the last confirmed sighting of Fossett.

The searchers have their own ideas about what might have happened after that. "We've had it happen," says Cynthia Ryan, "where somebody went down through some brush trees, or through some ground cover in a steep ravine somewhere, and you can't see up from the wreckage and you can't see down into it." Beyond that, she says, "he could have had some kind of health problem"—say, a heart attack. (Fossett's doctor, Harry B. Knaster, says his patient's overall health was excellent, but acknowledges that he did have Fossett on Lipitor to reduce high cholesterol levels.)

RELATED MULTIMEDIA

Fossett's Last Flight (Interactive map)

Views from the Search Plane (Video)

Timothy M. Evinger, the sheriff of Klam-ath County, Oregon, sees little mystery in Fossett's disappearance. "Based on everything I learned during the investigation and search," he says, "I believe that Fossett's plane crashed, that the wreckage is located in a difficult and remote terrain, and that Fossett did not survive."

In the end, the most plausible explanation for what happened may lie in Fossett's own words. Despite his numerous brushes with death and his lifelong pursuit of dangerous achievement, he acknowledged the reality of things beyond his control. "Throughout my career as an extreme sports adventurer," he wrote in Chasing the Wind, "I have come to understand the literal meaning of the phrase, 'the winds of fate.'"

* * *

Our search flight is over. Neither Campbell nor Vanzant expected to find much on the mission—it's winter now, and snow has carpeted some of the region where Fossett would likely be found. And, aside from a brief curiosity about a glint Vanzant spotted, none of us saw any sign—just miles and miles of pines and scrubland. Whether the remains of the famous pilot are lost here forever, as many believe—or, as Cynthia and Ron Ryan speculate, a hiker or a hunter eventually will find them—the outcome is almost certainly in the hands of the fate about which Fossett mused. Either way, the mystery surrounding his final flight likely will stand—as permanent, as puzzling, and as oddly absorbing as his life of chasing records. The mountains, the canyons, the winds aren't telling. From so high above, the landscape lies as mute as a graveyard.

Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press